Sir: (Onitsha Nigeria, 2nd day of April, 2012)-Recall, Sir that the leadership of International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law-Intersociety, wrote your office on 31st day of January 2012, and stressed the need for your new office to order for the removal of all police roadblocks across the country. We also reminded your office that the discontinuation of the use of roadblocks, which breeds police corruption including extortion at roadblocks, is a test case for your new assignment and a major condition that would determine your confirmation as the country’s substantive IGP by the President-headed Nigeria Police Council. We also informed you how we counted 85 police roadblocks in January 2012, from Aba in Abia State to Onitsha in Anambra State, Southeast Nigeria, covering about 125 kilometers only.

Today, we can proudly say that our leading campaigns over the years regarding police corruption, especially roadblock extortion and associated negligent killings or extra-judicial killings and torture, are not in vain. This is because of your firm directive, which we understand, was clothed in a coded presidential directive to your new office to that effect. Elated by towering responses from teeming Nigerian road users over this major policy change, Nigerians invited us back to roads so as to count gains and losses so recorded as a result of this historic policy change.

In responding to their holy request, our field personnel were deployed and they came back with cheering news to the effect that the gains outweighed the losses at extreme disparity levels. The losses are pockets of robbery and other violent attacks strongly believed to have been sponsored, or aided, or abetted by criminal common and superior cops, who were unhappy with the said major policy change effected by your office.

For instance, in Anambra State, Southeast Nigeria, particularly in Onitsha and environs, at least, criminal citizens believed to have been aided and sponsored from some formal security quarters have launched five major violent attacks or crimes against persons and properties. The attacks ranged from the killing of five members of the Oba Community Vigilante Group, murdering of a restaurant operator at Awada, to robbing of some commercial banks’ customers on their way to the affected banks. In all these, the local police sources always hinge such attacks on removal of roadblocks thereby raising suspicion of their involvement or complicity. Credible statistics following this major policy change showed that the level of violent attacks against persons and properties was higher in the days of police roadblocks and extortion than now. Also, every social indication points to the fact that these resurging pockets of violent attacks are stage-managed and police-related.

Unarguably, roadblocks’ extortion proceeds have surpassed the roguish electioneering proceeds and become the most lucrative source of criminal enrichment in the Nigeria Police Force, fetching the Force billions of naira every month. The command and the rank and file structures of the Force are direct and indirect beneficiaries under “extort, cot and return” methodologies.

[b]O[b]ver N4.6Billion Saved In Two Months (February-March 2012):
F[/b]or records, Sir, our in-depth checks, using our 2011 projections (Police Corruption As Human Rights Abuse: How Corrupt Personnel Of The NPF Illegally Enriched The Force With N53.48Billion Arising From Roadblock Extortion In Three Years) show that N4.620Billion has been saved from over 3,500 police roadblocks across the country in the months of February and March 2012. Before the removal of roadblocks, which took effect in February 2012, there were over 1,500 police roadblocks in the Southeast; 500 in the South-south; 500 in the Southwest; 300 in the Northeast; 300 in the Northwest; and 400 in the North-central geopolitical zones of Nigeria.
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In the Southeast zone, N3,120Billion was saved in the two months of February and March 2012. The breakdown indicates that in Anambra State with 400 roadblocks, N960Million was saved; in Abia State with 400 roadblocks, N960Million was saved; in Imo State with 300 police roadblocks, N720Million was saved; in Enugu State with 200 roadblocks, N240Million was saved; and in Ebonyi State with 200 roadblocks, N240Million was saved, all totaling N3,120Billion. The differences between Anambra, Abia and Imo States on one hand and Enugu and Ebonyi States on the other as represented in the amounts so saved, are due to the fact that the latter are relatively “white-collar or civil service States”, whereas the former are relatively “blue-collar or cash carriage” States. This explains why N20,000 per extortionist squad on daily basis was used for the latter, while N40,000 was used for the former.

In the South-south zone with 500 police roadblocks, N600Million was saved on N20,000 average daily extortion proceeds per squad. In the Southwest zone with 500 roadblocks, N600Million was saved. In the North-central zone with 400 police roadblocks, N120Million was saved on daily extortion proceeds’ average of N5,000.00 per squad used for the three zones in the North. In the Northwest zone with 300 police roadblocks engaging in extortion, N90Million was saved; and in the Northeast zone with 300 police roadblocks engaging in extortion, N90Million was saved.

In all, the staggering sum of N4,320 Billion was saved in the Southern part of Nigeria, whereas a paltry sum of N300Million was saved in the Northern part of Nigeria, totaling N4,620Billion in two months or February to March 2012. As usual, the Southeast geopolitical zone took the lion’s share of N3,120Billion having been substantially saved from over 1,500 police roadblock and extortion points. The gallop disparity between the Southern and Northern parts has to do with uneven income spread, number of extortionist roadblocks and extortion and corruption amenability.

In arriving at our findings, we observed that there are still pockets of roadblocks and extortion especially on inter-city and Trunk B roads across the country particularly in the Southern part including Southeast and Delta areas, in defiance of your office’s directive. Also night roadblocks and extortion especially from 7pm to 9pm (evening lucrative hours) are routine in some of the Southern parts. In all, there is about 80% compliance to your office’s directive, except in Delta State where compliance has fallen to 30%, no thanks to CP Ikechukwu Aduba’s counter and magisterial directive.

A strong Case Against CP Okechukwu Aduba (+234(0) 8037058988) Of The Delta State Police Command:
While we remain opposed to the lopsided selection and promotion of senior police officers by your office and the Police Service Commission, which have shut out the officers of the Southeast zone, we shall not allow the zone to be represented by “black sheep” and mercantilist senior police officers. Any such officer caught either by his or her utterances or actions should be booted out of the Force forthwith. It is in the light of the foregoing that we, unmistakably, wish to condemn the recent attitudes of CP Ikechukwu Aduba, CP Delta State, South-south Nigeria, who is one of the six or seven Southeast CPs recently named in the list of sixty-one CPs posted to various police formations by your office. In the said list, sixteen CPs came from the Southwest zone alone.

CP Ikechukwu Aduba, as reported in the Saturday Vanguard Newspaper of March 31st, 2012 at page 7, engaged in a height of disloyalty when he ordered policemen back on the roads claiming that their absence was responsible for “rising cases of armed robbery and kidnapping and other criminal activities on the highways”. In the report, which he did not deny, he expressed surprise that “he did not see any policemen on the Asaba-Ughelli- Warri Road” while passing through the area. He went further to twist and misinterprets your office’s directive through warped and un-professional interpretation of “police roadblocks” and “heavy police presence on the roads conducting stop and search”.




He stated these while on tour of the Warri Area Command. As correctly reported by the Vanguard Newspaper, few hours after Mr. Aduba’s counter-directive on Thursday, March 29, 2012, police personnel trouped out in droves back to all strategic extortionist roads in Delta State including Warri and Asaba, the economic and political capital cities of the State. When our undercover team went round Asaba, police personnel were fully backed to site, engaging in their usual criminal activities of extortion, etc. Possibly worried by meager returns from night extortionist police personnel who flood strategic locations in Delta State, from 7pm to 9pm (evening lucrative hours), he magisterially and suicidally defied his superior boss’s directives including that of his “Commander-in-Chief” as well as the recent resolution of the House of Reps and became an “Nza” bird that challenges its god to a wrestling match.

Apart from the fact that CP Aduba has been roundly condemned by all and sundry including the Vanguard Newspaper’s web visitors, he is unfit to be a Constable in the Nigeria Police Force not to talk of being a “Commissioner of Police”. If a Commissioner of Police in this modern age could rely on heavy police presence on the roads so as to “fight violent crimes”, it simply means that such a CP is grossly incompetent and unfit to continue serving in the NPF. Many believed that CP Aduba is an arch exponent of “swollen purse concept of policing”. Others have described him as extortion czar, considering the fact that there is no difference between “heavy police presence on the roads conducting stop and search” and police roadblocks and extortion.

Therefore, we demand that CP Ikechukwu Aduba should be recalled to the Force Headquarters forthwith, queried and banned from holding any State Command portfolio pending when his dismissal from the NPF is confirmed by the PSC so as to serve as deterrent to others. As the operational head of the NPF, your office should issue a culpability directive to the officers-in-charge of the over 6,500 police formations in the country to the effect that any further violent attacks against persons and properties found to be professionally uncalled for, should lead to the officer-in-charge of such formation and its jurisdiction being dismissed. By so doing, all seeming stage-managed and police-related violent criminal attacks against persons and properties will disappear, except traditional violent criminal attacks against persons and properties by habitual men of under-world, which should, also, be tamed inexcusably.

Finally, the fundamental step towards curbing police corruption is the sustenance of the removal of the police roadblocks and intensification of patrol methods and intelligence gathering and usage. Also the Area Commanders, Divisional Police Officers and their Officers-in-charge of operations should be firmly directed by your office to be part of the patrol and surveillance operations so as to discourage them from traditionally sitting idly in their offices, waiting for extortion-bred swollen envelops from their corrupted field junior officers. Since most of the States’ Governments have donated hundreds of patrol vans and motorbikes (such as Anambra and Lagos States) to their States Police Commands, they should properly be made functional and fueled at all times, from statutory police overheads so as to enhance the patrol and surveillance operations. Other motor arsenal such as foot-patrol and use of hired commercial buses and motorcycles should also be considered. Stationary operation style of policing should, completely, be done away with. Roadblock is a license to police corruption and professional incompetence and discontinuation of same as a “modern policing technique” is the beginning of wisdom for the Nigeria Police Force.

Sir, always count on our support for genuine and effective police reforms in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Yours Faithfully,
For: International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law

Emeka Umeagbalasi
Chairman, Board of Trustees
Phone: +234(0) 8033601078, +234(0) 8180103912
Email: umeagbalasi@yahoo.com, info@intersociety-ng.org
Website: www.intersociety-ng.org

Over N4.6Billion Saved In Two Months (February-March 2012) Nigerian police i believe they are involved in a lot of robberies and assassinations look at south east 1500 road blocks compare to other zones and i wonder why they keep telling us that SE are not economically vibrant compare to others

good post and i hope the message gets really high up so that efforts can be intensified to improve patrolling rather than road blocking

but how did the writer arrive at those monetary figures. i believe the policemen will not disclose how much they make from their extortion

all in all, nice job

where did you get this from

the only to stop nigeria from collrcting bribe is to pay them well. which they dont do

Musiwa,.:
the only to stop nigeria from collrcting bribe is to pay them well. which they dont do

you need to equip them with up to date gadgets and train them all over again and Nigerian police should focus more on paper works keeping records,the ones on patrol when ever arrest-occur,officers will take them in custody do their paper work detain them.If they will be charged to court the got 24hrs to do so, then the officers in the station will be the ones processing most of the case................